The Escape
by Shada The Cardie Dukal
Summary: If suspension of disbelief is what makes science fiction possible, I suggest we suspend it a bit further and get rid of the TPTB tyranny. As we all know, there is no dilemma that cannot be solved by Dukat's disciplined Cardassian mind…
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.

Notes and Spoilers: The events in the story take place immediately after the finale. The chapters contain spoilers for "Deep Space Nine", Season 7, "What you Leave Behind" Part 1 and 2. They also refer to events and settings in "Terok Nor: Day of the Vipers" by James Swallow. The food, the flora, the fauna and the units of time and distance are consistent with the "Terok Nor" trilogy and "Deep Space Nine" episodes. The events in "Waltz", "Tears of the Prophets" and "Covenant" are briefly mentioned.

Chapter 1

"Desperation is the raw material of drastic change.  
>Only those who can leave behind everything<br>they have ever believed in can hope to escape."

William S. Burroughs

The darkness in the cave was as thick as butter, blurring all senses of direction or location. A prone figure of bruised flesh was lying in the darkness slowly regaining consciousness. The first sensation was of pain that encompassed his entire body and he was not able to discern where up and down, left and right were. His nostrils twitched when he sniffed the stale, sooty air, a shaky hand touched the stony ground informing his mind that this was down and then the body rolled slightly and rested onto its back.

The semiconscious movement sent sharp pain to his torso so Dukat gasped and opened his eyes, fighting back the concussion shock that drove him into a timeless blackout and drowsiness. He could not feel a difference. "Have I lost my eyesight…again?" he thought and forced his mind to bring back his last visual memories from before the fall.

The Cardassian saw himself standing at the end of the fiery abyss, watching the pah-wraiths kill Kai Winn and relishing the end of her petty, dirty ambitions, when Sisko jumped on him and dragged him into the abyss, his last memory being the fires around him. "This must be the bottom of the chasm…" Dukat reflected but then dismissed the thought. "But no…if I had reached it, I would have been fried or the impact with the ground would have killed me."

He decided that wondering and speculating would be of no avail to him right now and shifted his attention to more practical concerns, namely evaluating his current physical condition and assessing the damages. His body was stinging with the indistinct sensation of soreness and the Cardassian felt his skin tight and parched. He fumbled the fabric of his trousers and assumed it must have been a first-degree burn. If his clothes had burnt, it would have been more severe. He balled his hand into a fist and rubbed the fingers together, the skin was scalded and hurt.

The pain he felt at breathing in suggested broken ribs, probably a small pneumothorax. He raised his right arm in the air and folded it several times quite pleased with the relative absence of sharp pain. It seemed that the brachia, ante-brachia and joints were not broken. Then the Cardassian stretched it backward behind his head and grunted with the sharp pain. "A clavicle fracture or a shoulder dislocation," he inferred remembering that ever since his basic training at the Military Academy when he did full contact fighting he was in the habit of curling and falling on his right side. Obviously, this conditioned reflex got activated before he hit the ground and his right shoulder absorbed the primary ground impact. He repeated the movements with his left arm and managed to stretch it with only a dull ache.

"Well, so far so good," Dukat reflected humourlessly and continued with inspecting his spinal cord. He turned his head to the left and held it until the tension in his neck ridges became unbearable and then he did the same to the right, the latter movement sending an unpleasant smart all over his body. However, the fact that he was able to perform it and the mobility of the arms indicated that the upper part of the spinal cord at least had not sustained any permanent damage.

Then he contracted his abdominal muscles ignoring the searing pain on the right and raised his torso over the ground propping it up on his arms. He grinned happily in the darkness because he knew that he could not have made it if the nerves attached to his spinal cord had not activated the muscle groups required.

Still, his right shoulder was trembling with the effort but the pain was tolerable so he finally managed to lock it in and shifted the weight of his upper body onto both arms. The pain concentrated near the shoulder and started descending to the right. "It is the clavicle and ribs, the shoulder must have transferred the impact force to the nearest bones," he considered and instructed himself, "Now the hips and legs".

The Cardassian knew that if there were any fractures in his legs, pelvis or heap bone, he would not be able to move so any plans of escape and survival would be futile. He would stay there waiting to die from dehydration in several days, longer than pure mammals would last due to his slower metabolism.

Slowly he bent his knees monitoring the intensity of pain. It hurt, of course, but the test confirmed his initial expectations. They could not have been broken because they had not formed a ground contact point and became bruised in the roll following the landing. He recollected his instructor of full contact fighting at the Academy.

The guy was an old crippled veteran from the Talarian border conflict, decorated with the Proficient Service Medallion. He kept repeating during the training sessions that falling was a lost art and those who mastered it would be able to rise again for another victory. Dukat smirked recalling that they had spent a great deal of time being hurled and crushed onto the termoconcrete floor in the gym because in a real battle there would not be absorbing mats.

The main things about falling were the distribution of weight during the landing and rolling over to spread the impact force. The primary contact point was supposed to take the major part of the impact force so it was crucial to choose a well-muscled area far from vital organs. The shoulder was such an area because the joint allowed for sagging even at the price of dislocation, spreading the force to the clavicle, ribs or shoulder blade.

The secondary point came into contact on curling into a ball and rolling aside, thus part of the thrust was dampened and it had to be the heap joint. The heap joint area itself, though well-muscled, was less supple than the shoulder so the trick was to make sure that it really came second.

Dukat remembered being thrown several times without curling and re-grouping his body in the air, landing his heap joint first. The instructor sneered and mocked him, "You cheeky lad from Lakat, you had better land on your shoulder because you are useless to Cardassia with a broken hip bone."

The Cardassian turned to the left assuming that whatever had happened, it was on the right, stretched his right leg forward and tried to rotate it. It was painful but it was possible. However, the only way to ascertain its real condition was to stand up and to shift weight on it but before that he decided to establish where exactly he had landed. He assumed it had to be a rocky protrusion or balcony sticking out of the walls forming the canyon. Dukat needed to figure out its dimensions having in mind that the landing and rolling required at least 3 decas.

He stood on all fours and stuck out his right hand sliding it over the stony ground but did not feel a change apart from the pain in his sore skin and the fine dust covering the stone. He reckoned it had to be ashes formed by the supernatural burning. Actually, he still could detect some remnants of warmth in the stone so he estimated that he had been unconscious for 5-6 hours.

Dukat advanced 2/10th of a deca, shifted his weight to his knees and left arm and groped for the margins of the protrusion. Nothing but stone, dust and tiny pebbles so he kept repeating the procedure until his hand touched an uneven cracked wall. He started examining the size and depth of the holes and cracks in the wall trying to figure out whether they suffice for climbing without a rope. Then the Cardassian stood on his knees, dug his fingers in the stone and pushed himself upwards using his thighs, calves and arms.

All muscles, nerves and bones wined and shuddered in protest; the pain was so excruciating that he could not even determine which body part hurt most. Yet, he knew that he could not afford to lie in the dark, full of self-pity, waiting to die without doing his best to survive; it simply was not like him. He ignored the pain, put more strength into his effort and pressed his sore fingers harder, telling himself that the more quickly he did it, the sooner the pain would abate.

The Cardassian stood up, leaned against the wall, transferred probingly part of his weight on his right leg, engaging the foot and the ankle first, then the lower leg and finally contracted the muscles of the thigh and heap letting the weight flow through the hip joint.

The pain was dull and unspecific and he concluded it was a result of bruises and concussion. Dukat happily ruled out the possibilities for a hip joint or pelvis fracture, thinking gratefully of his old instructor and deliberated his next move.

Until now, he was concentrated on his physical evaluation as a top priority and having ascertained that he was out of an immediate death threat his mind could not help drifting off considering the reasons for landing in this pitch-black hole. The reasons were grim, shameful and unflattering for his self-esteem.

One of his father's mentoring statements emerged from his memories "Religion is a sedative for the mind, crutches for the weak and unfit". He churned inwardly at the thought that he, the son of Procal Dukat, raised and trained to be the mere embodiment of Cardassian precision and effectiveness, could end up involved in Bajoran religious superstitions. He wondered how desperate he must have felt to resort to deities and phantoms as a way out. He had lost any sense of proportion; he had allowed his bitter resentment at the political situation in the Alpha Quadrant as well as the emotional shock of losing his family and Ziyal determine his choices.

Dukat had viewed his religious endeavours as a grudging symbiosis that he could easily tip and infringe when he saw fit. The idea that he could be used, swindled and left with nothing was incomprehensible to him. How could he forget that there was no substitute for the disciplined Cardassian mind? How could he allow to these supernatural creatures manipulate him and let his own mind slip out of control?

He shivered with repulsion flashing back the chain of choices, all of them misgivings, each leading to a dead end, and his efforts to make for it by lashing out at another extremity. All events formed a perverse chain reaction that had reached its critical mass in the cave and now he had to face the scale and consequences of his actions.

"I have become an adept at facing consequences," he mused in retrospection. All his life he had been doing the dirty work that no one dared to. If Dukat succeeded so much the better for us, if he failed there would be someone to blame. This had been the deal since he carried out the first attack against Bajor using a Tzenkethi marauder and destroyed their reprisal fleet. The Obsidians wanted Bajor badly but they did not know what to do so he did it for them and they kept their hands clean. The Central Command implied, off the record, that if he secured Bajor to Cardassia this would enhance his career development but if it went wrong, he would pay the price.

Later, when the Central Command realised that the situation on Bajor was getting out of hand, they sent him there as Prefect only to clear up Kell's mess. He was left on Bajor to deal with a hostile population, staff shortages and autonomous ground administration that implemented his policies reluctantly or interpreted them according to its own views.

He made it possible for Cardassia to use Bajor's resources for another 22 years until the Detapa Council got frightened by the uprising dissident movement and the border skirmishes with the Federation and decided to withdraw. The ungrateful clerk vermin in their offices on Cardassia Prime who had never fought and won even one battle in their insignificant lives, who had never taken any risks, they got the insolence to blame him for losing Bajor to the Resistance and the Federation.

After the Withdrawal, he risked his life and humiliated himself asking Sisko for help in order to save the civil Detapa Council from the Klingons. Still, that useless bunch of civilians sniffed with disdain, kept blabbering about civil rights and carried out their foul plots while Cardassia was losing her colonies and annexations. What was more, Rejal even demoted him and ruined his life, family and career because of Ziyal.

Anyway, for the time being there was nothing to be done so Dukat broke this train of thoughts and addressed his immediate problems. The Cardassian elected to establish the size and shape of the rocky protrusion where he had landed. Groping the rough surface in front of him, he made a step aside to the right. He repeated it five times estimating that each step was about half a deca wide. When he slid his right foot for the sixth stride, he heard a faint rustle of gravel and then the ground under his foot disappeared. He quickly side-stepped to the left and returned to his starting point. He did the same to the left and got to the end in four steps. The ledge seemed to be four decas and a half long at the base but it could get narrower at the periphery.

He came back to the centre and turned around leaning against the wall. Without the support of the wall, it would be too risky to stride in the jet-black nothingness so he squatted on all fours again and assessed the distance he had covered to reach the wall. He had made four small crawls gaining 2/10th of a deca each time so he went over the sequence of movements and arrived at his landing point. In eleven crawls his right hand stretched out in the vast darkness. It was highly unlikely for the periphery to retain a uniform depth of three decas and he expected it to be ragged and uneven.

Dukat stopped to rest because he was wheezing like a riding hound with broken wind. Moving crouched had put an extra pressure on his broken ribs and that affected his lungs. Nevertheless, his general condition was quite satisfactory and the movements he had performed increased his blood circulation and adrenaline flow so that the sharp pain lessened to a blurred achy sensation dispersed all over his body.

His combat experience suggested that the broken bones would start aching about 24 hours after the fractures had occurred because immediately after the trauma the body released adrenaline that acted as a painkiller. He had to use this adrenaline surge to climb the wall otherwise in several hours the pain would resume accompanied by dehydration and breathing difficulties.

He made short work of determining the shape of the periphery and found out that it was 4 decas deep on the left. On returning to the centre of the wall he positioned himself one deca to the left and pondered over his climbing. The rock was crumbly but offered enough fissures and dents to stick a hand, fingers or toes in it.

The Cardassian decided to take off his shoes because he needed a very precise command of his toes and feet considering that he could not put too much weight on his right arm. He tucked them under his belt securing them as tightly as he could because he did not want to go barefoot on the sharp rocks if he managed to climb up.

The Cardassian lifted his left foot 2/10th of a deca and slid his bare toes along the wall focusing on the sensation and estimating the depth and shape of each small cleavage he touched. He found one that accommodated his foot and now he had to make sure that it would take his weight. He raised his arms, his hands clung to the wall and he pushed himself up on his left leg. He lessened the tension in his arms and hands and allowed the greater part of his weight to flow down to his left foot. The small hollow did not crack further. Satisfied with its stability he repeated the procedure with another fissure where he thrust his right foot. Then he reached his left arm for another 2/10th of a deca and groped for a suitable grip. He let his body hang on the grip to test its stability and repeated the movement on the right.

Although he did his best to shift as much weight as possible to his right arm, he had to put up with the fact that he had to spare it and use it only when absolutely necessary. The stab in the chest and ribs was too strong so he took a deep breath, scowling at the wheezy sound, and moved his right leg 3/10th of a deca up searching the wall for a dent. He found one, pressed on it twice to check its solidity and continued with the left arm, the right leg and finally the right arm. After going over the sequence several times, he got the hack of it and gained momentum.

It was so tempting to climb upward without constantly checking the gripping points. Still, he restrained his compulsion to rush and cautioned himself to remain cool and precise. "Coolness and precision, that is our way, isn't it?" Dukat thought bitterly reflecting that his recent deeds were anything but cool precision. Religious tantrum and blind rage had seemed to drive him over the last year. In fact, he felt he was getting angry with himself, which interfered with his concentration and risk assessment so he forced himself to stop and calm down.

The Cardassian estimated that he had covered 4 decas so far and he realised that he could not afford the luxury of miscalculation from now on. He was still wondering how he had survived the plunge in the abyss in the first place. No matter how correctly he had landed and how his military drilling had helped him to absorb the impact it simply did not add up.

The only possible explanation that came to his mind was that the pah-wraiths inside him had not managed to leave his body before the impact. If he had died on crashing into the stone or had burnt in the flames, they would have remained trapped in a dead avatar. Logically, if the avatar dies, the supernatural force that possesses the vessel dies, too. Dukat concluded that he had been still controlled by the Pah-wraiths when he hit the ground and they had vacated his body immediately after the landing.

He assumed they had guided his fall onto this protrusion. He recalled the total lack of pain when Sisko punched him twice in the jaw. Under the influence of the pah-wraiths, his body must have been invulnerable and sturdier. This accounted for his relatively good condition having in mind the severity of the blow and the intensity of the flames. Moreover, Cardassians were renown for having a thicker bone structure than most of the species in the Alpha Quadrant.

Then he suddenly recollected that his species evolved from a sand- crawling primeval mammal that had retained quite a lot of reptilian characteristics. Ironically, he was doing what his primordial ancestors had done millions of years before. He owned them the effort of doing his best because they had done it in their time thus providing him with the chance and innate skill to reclaim his life.

The Cardassian let his body feel each small stony bump, sticking to the rocky surface like a wet towel. He felt almost absorbed by the stone and its residual warmth. This was a new sensation to him, the wall was no longer an enemy to conquer but a habitat where he could feel safe.

Dukat started moving with a perfect rhythm and grace, making three checks for each gripping point. Although it was pitch-dark and he was not sure if he was blind or it was the darkness, he somehow visualised the wall in his mind.

After covering approximately 4 decas, he reached a big hollow marked by a sharp change in the slope. The wall inside the hollow abruptly turned into a shaft that allowed for crawling rather than climbing. The Cardassian stopped to have a rest and weigh up the options. If he continued following the shaft, he would reach the upper ledge of the abyss more quickly. But if the shaft narrowed at some point, he would be forced to crawl backwards, which was riskier and would slow him down. The hollow was about a deca deep and two decas wide.

He decided it was worthwhile to establish if he could come back in case he needed to. He moved ahead 3/10th of a deca stretching out his arms in order to determine the shape of the shaft. Then he stopped, lied flat and pushed himself backwards. The rock was rough enough to brake the slide and cut it into a series of small controlled slip-downs. It was a calculated risk so he pursued the inviting shaft. Besides, he had some gut feeling that it was the right thing to do, he felt the compelling push of his genetic memory running through his veins, the uncanny instinct of an ancient lizard crawling for the sun. He covered another 4 decas advancing quickly and stopping to check the width of the shaft and its structure. It was getting narrower, but only by half of a deca.

Suddenly his groping hand sank into sharp gravel. He froze and clung to the rock realising that if he destabilised any dislodged stones he might well cause a rock-fall. He buried his fingers into the gravel and dug carefully into it. The gravel gave way to smaller stones and beneath them, he felt sandy crumbles covering the rock. Dukat assumed that such a layered structure indicated the place where a massive chunk of rock had torn from the wall. That was how the hollow below and the shaft must have been formed. This large crack was likely to have taken place near the edge of the rocky wall so he reckoned he should be approaching the stony platform surrounding the abyss.

The Cardassian stretched his legs to check whether he could use the shaft walls as gripping points while creeping over the gravel. He lodged his feet against the shaft wall, lifted his body 1/10th of a deca above the stones and supported himself on his left arm with the fingers under the gravel. His right hand fumbled in the stones for a place to insert it. He felt the stony bottom and quickly shifted his body weight onto his right arm bracing against the pain when the muscles and bones on the right side of his torso engaged in the movement and absorbed the weight. Dukat moved his feet up the shaft trying to distribute more weight to them and searched the stones with his left hand to find where to place it.

His right arm trembled with the effort of suppressing the searing pain and when he transferred his weight to his left one, he gave a groan of relief and took several deep hoarse breaths. He wished he could avoid using his thoracic and pectoral muscles that attached to the fractured bones but it could not be helped. He slid his legs upward and gathered himself anticipating the pain that would accompany his next weight shift. After covering about a deca he reached a point where the shaft wall disappeared and he found himself crouched over a gravel bed.

The Cardassian simply kept moving on all fours, trying to place his knees and lower legs carefully on the stones while his hands were digging for the stony bottom. In another deca he noticed that the gravel was receding gradually, turning into crumbled coarse sand and suddenly his stretching hand touched firm rock. He ran his fingers over the surface several times, wary of cherishing unrealistic expectations. The rock displayed equal uniformity, all debris had slid down the shaft and the slope was almost imperceptible compared to the incline of the shaft.

Dukat assumed this must be the edge, crawled over it and moved forwards searching the surface in front of him. He did not want to fall into another gorge or gap and squander the efforts he had exerted so far. Having covered half a deca he stopped to assess his status and to plan his further actions.

The Cardassian realised that his hands and feet were bleeding; the sore burned skin was easily scraped off by the sharp stones. He had not noticed it before because he was concentrated on his task, shunting off everything of less importance. He checked his belt, fumbled the boots and put them on considering tearing pieces off his sleeves to wrap them around his hands.

But then, on second thought, he decided that the cloth would muffle the sensitivity of his hands and fingers. He sniffed the air and felt that its oxygen content was higher, which could be attributed to air circulation. His spirits rose at the prospect of coming closer to the entrance of the Fire Caves.

He searched his eidetic memory and revived his route and movements during the last few metrics before the fall. Kai Winn and he entered the cave hall from a passage on the left. He remembered standing on the platform next to the passage, his back to the abyss when Sisko attacked him from the left.

Dukat could not figure out whether the stone ledge that saved him was on the left side of the chasm or on the right one. The most viable course of action was to move forward until he got to the wall and then to continue keeping the wall on his right side. He advanced two decas without encountering any significant changes in the stone structure.

In another deca he noticed that he was not touching occasional chunks and stones any more so he reckoned he was approaching the junction between the path and the cave wall where the stone was least eroded. After half a deca his hand bumped into the wall, he turned left and slowly stood up leaning against it.

Dukat could feel a faint draught of air somewhere in front of him. He licked his finger frowning at the taste of dust and blood and raised his hand in the air. His saliva was thick which was a sign of the forthcoming dehydration. He focused on the sensation and felt distinct air undulations around his wet finger so his imagination was not playing tricks on him.

In about 10 decas, the path he was crawling on made a sharp turn to the right so he assumed he was leaving the hall with the abyss and was moving to the entrance of the stone complex. He passed the turn and stood up to determine the dimensions of the structures surrounding him.

The Cardassian brought back the moment when Kai Winn and he had headed for the main hall. He had made about 40 strides after that with the wall on his left. If he had gained half a deca at each stride taking into account that he was talking to the bitch, walking after her, making sure she would not suddenly change her mind. He must have covered about 20 decas from the place where she had stopped to have a rest on a big craggy boulder.

Dukat squatted again and crept forward checking the stone surface in front of him and on his left. He kept moving for about 20 decas without coming across any changes in the structures surrounding him. Then his groping left hand touched a boulder, a solid chunk of stone about 6/10th of a deca high. He allowed himself a wary smile because his estimates turned out to be correct. The boulder was marking a sharp turn to the left so he resumed his crawl and passed the same turn, reversed to the right, carefully checking the structures around him.

It had been a long time since he experienced such a lucidity of mind. The familiar feeling of being in control, weighing up possibilities, calculating additional factors, opting for the best solution and cutting loses had turned into a blurred nightmare since that wretched moment when he touched the Bajoran artefact. There had been moments when he felt more like his real self and he remembered them more clearly but most of the time, he had felt like a stunned observer trapped in the corner of his own mind. In fact, he felt screwed up and the realisation was gnawing at his ego.

His reminiscences dwelt again on the catastrophic sequence of wrong decisions he had made. He recalled the circumstances that had forced him to join the Dominion. The Klingons were snatching planet after planet, the Maquis got emboldened by Cardassia's hardships and intensified their attacks and the civilian Detapa Council was doing nothing but petty tit for tat. It had seemed a good idea at the beginning, but when the war kept dragging, the Dominion felt strong enough to breach their promises in order to entice new allies. He had counted on their twisted desire to enforce law and order and had assumed that once they had dealt with the Alpha Quadrant they would have moved on to torment another quadrant leaving him in charge of the former.

He hated himself for the lunatic fit he had performed before escaping from Sisko. He could have simply dumped the idiot on that planet with his beacon transponder and disappear. The thought that he had considered Sisko a counterpart that might have understood his point of view and the weight of his responsibilities was hilarious. His preoccupation with Sisko and the Bajorans' ingratitude for his efforts to save them from the Central Command seemed so insignificant to him now.

Dukat could not understand why he had been so naïve to expect that prigs would understand that such a thing like Absolute Good did not exist and the choices were limited to the lesser of two evils. Only people coming from rich, complacent worlds could afford the luxury of showing off their conscience and moral integrity but Cardassia had always been on the brink of survival and scarcity.

Then he drifted to his more personal causes for remorse. It did bother him killing that Trill lieutenant in the Bajoran shrine – she was cute, clever and had style. It was highly unfortunate that she had been there. He felt ashamed of gathering that sorry bunch of wackoes on Empok Nor, trying to preach them. He wished he had not kidnapped Major oops… Colonel Kira and made her witness his total lack of sanity and rationality. On the other hand, it could have been worse if she had not been there to stop him because the pah-wraith in him was prodding him to wipe out everyone and he was about to kill his own child along with his stupid but sincere congregation. "Probably the only Bajorans who really liked me…" the abrupt awareness nauseated him.

Dukat had enjoyed the feeling of being their protector and leader without having to resort to forceful measures. He had appreciated the hope and admiration in their eyes during the sermons because he knew that whenever he looked a Bajoran in the eyes, he would find only fear, hatred and distrust there. Legate Kell had warned him once that "Dukat" and "Bajor" were interconnected and whatever happened, he would be held responsible.

That vole hiding behind his desk in the bunker situated in the embassy in Dakhur and later on Derna moon, while he was doing his dirty work, making the decisions Kell did not have the brains to make, giving the orders he did not have the guts to give. Kell even invented a joke about that so every clerk in the Central Command Building parroted it during the lunch breaks. "What happens to a member of the Central Command who misinterprets the situation on Bajor?" And the answer was, "Nothing, because Dukat pays the price."

His stretching left hand touched a stone higher than the craggy ridge and this brought him back to reality. He stood up to examine it but he could not reach its end and inferred that it must be another solid wall. The path he was crawling on made a sharp turn to the right. He passed the turn and stood up to determine the dimensions of the structures surrounding him. The path was a deca and a half wide and he felt solid high walls on both sides closing around him like a passageway in a mine.

The Cardassian could walk carefully keeping his arms stretched and probing the floor in front of him before placing his feet. He recollected that after the entrance they had walked in this stony passage for about 100 deca and had made two turns. The first one was to the right and the second one was to the left. He had just negotiated the latter turn so he expected a left turn in 50 decas.

Drawing near the entrance, he could not help wondering if he was blind or not. It would be so unfortunate if he had done all this for nothing. On the other hand, the pah-wraiths had restored him to his original state and they had been forced to vacate the vessel quickly so there was a fair chance that his eyesight had not been impaired. Anyway, he was going to find out soon.

Dukat kept walking in the dark, checking the surface and the walls until he reached the right turn. Immediately after it, he felt an unmistakable air current. He took it for another sign that the entrance was near. The stone was cold and firm, without chunks and gravel. In fifty decas, the darkness paled to dim dark-grey shadows and then he saw the daylight of a cold Bajoran morning.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Dukat stepped out of the cave. He could see, he could smell the fresh air, he felt the cold. It was a great feeling but it was not over yet he chided himself. He glanced at his clothes and saw he was wearing Bajoran singed rags, caked with soot and stony dust. He took off his jacket and shirt and inspected his skin.

The grey tone was peppered with pinkish areas where the flames had reached him. He expected that the burned areas would blister and start oozing. There was a vast oedema, bluish with fibrin, around his right shoulder and clavicle and it was descending towards the ribs.

His priority was to cover his neck, head and hands, every inch of visible grey skin, or he would not survive an encounter with the Bajorans. He put on his shirt again and started tearing off the lining of the jacket, trying not to damage the fabric.

The Cardassian used the back part for a hood and one of the sleeves was transformed into a scarf he wrapped around his neck overlapping the hood. He tore the second sleeve into two long strips, wound them around his hands and tied the cloth at the wrists in a parody of mittens. He planned to enter the nearest Bajoran settlement disguised like that, pretend to be a beggar, a former worker at a Cardassian mining facility maimed by an explosion, and scrounge some food, water and a blanket.

Having secured his camouflage, he considered his location and recollected the map images of Bajor he had viewed so many times. The Fire Caves were situated in the northern part of the Kendra province forming the beginning of a mountain range spreading to the end of the continent. He was well acquainted with the geography of the Kendra province because this was where the Cardassians had first set foot on Bajor.

The first Cardassian enclave was built in the Korto district of Kendra province. It was located in the vicinity of Korto City, which was ruined and abandoned at the beginning of the Annexation. Half of the enclave had been in fact a covered Obsidian operation centre. The Oralians, who originally inhabited it, were evicted by xenophobic supporters of the Circle and later by the Cardassian invading troops.

A bitter curl appeared on his lips when he recalled these details – how young, eager and inept he was then. How much he wanted to prove himself and how his innate competitiveness had served the bureaucrats in the Central Command as well as Kell's ascension to the heights of the Cardassian political games.

Now, 50 years later, his trepidation and cravings seemed so unimportant, as though they had happened to someone else. How could he have known that what started then as a clumsy diplomatic mission would brand his entire life?

Dukat assumed that some of the underground bunkers the Cardassian military facilities always contained must have sustained the devastation during the initial stage of the Annexation. He hoped that he could find an old transmitter there and send a coded distress signal that could be deciphered by a Cardassian military vessel.

However, walking to Korto City would be a formidable task. Korto was about 200 000 linnipates away. Even if he had been in top condition, it would be difficult. He wished he could put a firm bandage on his clavicle and ribs but he did not have enough cloth to do it.

Then it occurred to him that the Kendra Shrine was near the enclave, so if he made it to the Shrine he could reach the enclave in half a day's walk. If he pretended he wanted to visit the Shrine, probably someone would be willing to give him a lift, or he might be able to join a group of visitors or pilgrims.

He decided to walk southwards, found the path leading to the Fire Caves and departed from the stone complex. While walking he worried if his universal translator would work because otherwise he had to rely on his grasp of Bajoran language which was quite good in terms of vocabulary but the syntax and pronunciation posed certain difficulties. Still, if he gave the impression of being nutty and deranged, no one would expect intelligible conversing skills from him.

Two bells later he saw a brook so he stopped to drink water and clean himself and his clothes. The water was cold, of course, too cold for his species to enjoy it, but the cold had numbing effect on his bruises and burns, and it dulled the pain in his fingers and toes that had been ulcerated by the sharp rocks. He decided to soak his shirt and put it on wet because it would chill his fractures and the burns.

The sun was shining and the constant movement would keep him warm enough. He resumed his slog looking at the vegetation around the path. He did not see any mapa or alva trees, only the big nyatrees and pines, he heard birds and animals in the wood, but killing an animal without a weapon was highly unlikely. Besides, if he wanted to hunt, he had to leave the path and enter the forest. He would lose time and exhaust himself and there was no guarantee that he would catch anything.

Despite his efforts to keep his fractures cooled, the pain in his ribs was more pronounced now and he felt dizzy and weak. The burned patches of his skin hurt because the movement tugged and stretched them. But stopping here in the middle of nowhere was not an option either so he kept trudging along the path hoping to reach a settlement. In order to distract himself from the pain and weakness, he toyed with the idea of transport options. Kai Winn and he had beamed close to the Fire Caves from the capital of Ashalla.

If he reached a small village, the chance to find there a transport facility was next to nothing because Bajoran villages were notorious for being isolated, backward places. Simply the locals liked it that way. They lived there in a total timelessness, oblivious of technology, politics, wars or whatever. The average Bajoran farmer had the mindset of an ignorant peasant of the pre-warp age. His fields, his local community and temple, his friends and relatives formed the boundaries of his small primitive world.

An old skimmer or flyer owned by a big farmer who travelled to centres of commerce would be the most plausible option. However, if he happened to enter a more urban-like settlement that hosted small businesses and industrial enterprises, he stood a fair chance to find a transport facility there. What is more, the locals would have more skimmers and flyers thus making it easier for him to sneak one.

Approximately 4 bells later, he estimated the time by observing the position of B'hava'el in the sky and the shadows the trees cast, he approached a settlement. It was not a village, it was bigger and it lay in the valley below. There were two small towns in the northern part of Kendra province. One was Harta and the other one was Maketo. The latter was situated to the east and he was walking southwards so this had to be Harta. He indulged his need for having a rest while familiarising himself with its outlines.

There was a central core with big two- or three-storeyed buildings, made of fusionstone. They demonstrated the typical architecture of Bajor, delicate arches and oval shapes with a lot of light and space. He assumed they were quite old, they must have been built well before the Annexation. He inferred that this should be the old town and the administrative district comprising a municipality building, a town hall, a temple, a library, a hospital and a militia precinct.

The Cardassian managed to discern a bantaca spire surrounded by a small square, which implied the place where the town was situated had ancient roots. Three wide roads were starting from the central core and he traced them to adjacent industrial and residential areas. The periphery of the central core abounded with smaller, ordinary buildings of similar size. They looked like offices, shops, storing facilities, workshops and diners, combined with apartments on the second floors or the attics. It was smaller than Korto City, it looked provincial and sleepy but definitely not rural, so Dukat estimated that it was likely to have one or two transport facilities at least.

He decided to try the periphery where he expected to find enough passers-by, which was good for begging and getting information. The Cardassian made some adjustments to his camouflage, making sure no grey skin or scales were visible and headed for the periphery. The path gradually widened and seemed well trodden so he concluded that the locals were in the habit of visiting the outskirts. He kept walking and soon entered the town.

He came near a wide street bustling with loitering people swarming around the shops and stalls. The small patches between the buildings were taken up by flea markets selling semi-legal merchandise judging by the fidgeting, jittery sellers who whisked away the browsers and whispered confidentially to the prospect buyers.

The stalls in the street offered fresh meat, eggs, vegetables and fruit brought from nearby villages. Dukat observed that no one looked scrawny, ill or unhappy, no one wore shabby clothes, and thought, "I came hungry and ambitious to Bajor and I am about to leave it as a beggar…if I manage to. We could have handled this world more wisely… They were stupid and stubborn but still we should have known better."

The reports on Bajor regarding the first 18 years of the Annexation emerged from his memory. This period was marked by a total lack of strategy, co-ordination and consistency. Different lobbies within the Central Command, the Obsidian Order and the Detapa Council had come up with several absurd schemes and unfortunately had them implemented.

There had been attempts for full-scaled colonisation, local skirmishes and ill-targeted reprisal acts that opened the chasm between both peoples and nothing could bridge it. As a result, a lot of Bajoran farmers and workers were forcefully driven out of their land and towns, losing their homes and jobs. They turned into drifting scavengers and stragglers and had to be gathered in refugee camps to be fed and controlled. The vacated farms became unproductive due to bad management, over-farming and pollution.

It had always galled him that he failed to convince the Central Command to manage Bajoran resources in the long term so that the renewable ones could replenish. The sheer stupidity of turning 1/3rd of the labour force into helpless mouths to feed was beyond his ability to comprehend. Instead of working for the Union and earning their upkeep in a decent way, they had to be fed by the Cardassian Union.

Then the ruined farmers and workers passed on their grudges to the next generation and so the Resistance was born. So many mistakes had been made on Bajor that when he became Prefect the situation was beyond repair, no matter how much he wanted to change it.

He shook his head and returned to his pressing concerns namely, food, a blanket, more water and transport, in that order. He approached a stall selling warm cooked food – mapa bread, porwiggy and porli meat, hasperat, veklava, country stews. Next to the stall, there were several portable tables and benches so that the customers could eat their food there.

It was real food, not replicated, and the odour had a nearly intoxicating effect on him. A man looking like a clerk or small merchant had just finished his lunch and was carrying his dishes with the leftovers to the recycling device next to the stall.

"We managed to teach them to be less wasteful, at the very least," Dukat thought, flinching at the memory of the feast in the Naghai Keep so many years ago when he saw the servants throwing away the leftovers. At the same time, his first-born son was dying and the underlying cause was malnutrition. When the man was about to put the plates in the niche, he stretched his hand and said in Bajoran, "Food…please." The man startled and jumped back, letting the dishes drop in Dukat's hand.

The owner of the stall, a fat dark-haired man with a sullen expression, snarled at Dukat, "Get out of here, you freak! Don't pester my customers." The beggar stepped back to the wall of a nearby building and bolted the food.

The customers at the tables gaped at him with a mixture of curiosity and disgust and started commenting, "Oh, that's horrible, don't they round up these wretches somewhere to look after them. Look at the dirty rags around his head, neck and hands. Is this some kind of illness? Is it dangerous?"

A stout middle-aged woman with reddish hair held in an elaborated bun showed her head from the cooking compartment of the stall. "Rean, what is going on? Why are you shouting?" she demanded gruffly.

"Oh, nothing, just a straggler but he frightened a customer about to recycle," the man muttered back.

The woman stepped firmly outside her kitchen with a ladle in her hand. She stood in front of the stall and spotted a shrouded figure that was squatting on the pavement, polishing the dishes with a piece of bread. Then she glared at the whispering revolted customers and snapped at them, "He is not dangerous but he is certainly exhausted, hungry and ill."

She took two plates shovelled a little of everything on them, put a roll of bread on top and strode to the beggar with defiant determination. She put the plates next to him. "What is your name?" she asked and squatted before him.

"Anjohl Tennan," he answered keeping his head down. He took the first plate and added, "Thank you."

"It is OK, there is enough food," she reassured him and enquired, "What happened to you?"

"A Cardassian mine…explosion… I burnt… wounds nasty, don't heal." Dukat was doing his best to eat slowly and politely with his head down. The translator was working but he spoke that way on purpose, to avoid complicated questions.

"What are you doing here?" the woman nodded sympathetically, seemingly buying his story.

"I walk, walk, walk… Harta?" he used a rising intonation.

"Yes, this is Harta," she confirmed and asked, "Where are you going?"

He could not risk a glance at her face expression but judging by her voice, she sounded genuinely interested. "Kendra Shrine…feel the Prophets," he explained dutifully awe-stricken.

The Bajoran at the stall, presumably her husband, yelled impatiently, "Kalessa, there are customers. Don't waste your time with that beggar."

The woman shot him a scalding look and retorted, "You have forgotten the Occupation, haven't you? You don't remember what is like being hungry and suffering?"

"The Occupation ended 7 years ago, the Dominion war was over 3 days ago and I just want to have a normal life," the man mumbled somewhat defeated.

"The Gratitude Festival took place two weeks ago, Rean," she spoke to him softly. "Everyone should be grateful for something and it seems to me that this fellow has nothing to be grateful for…" She stood up, walked to a near building and disappeared in the entrance.

Despite the pain in the chest and his bleak chances of escape, Dukat could not suppress his chuckle. The difference in stances and mentality between Bajoran males and females never ceased to amuse him. Their men were passive, treacherous, suspicious, sulky cowards always staying on the safe side. But women were something completely different. Passionate, courageous, determined, ready to sacrifice themselves and to go to any extremities.

During interrogations on Terok Nor men were the first to break, not hesitating to trade their lives for the life of someone else, whereas women were considerably more resilient. When the Resistance attacked, women fired, planted bombs, deactivated force fields and cracked the security systems while men stood behind co-ordinating the operation. Men embodied the status quo but women represented the true spirit of Bajor.

The woman returned carrying a blanket, a big warm scarf, bandages, some gauze and a wound disinfectant. She gave him the supplies and offered, "Do you want me to take care of your wounds? I have seen hundreds of nasty wounds. I used to work as a nurse at a field hospital immediately after the Occupation. Not a trained nurse but better than nothing."

He did not expect that mentioning the wounds would trigger such a sentient reaction. With a proper handling these people could have been turned into an asset to the Union. The wound disinfectant and the gauze were particularly useful because they could stop the blistering burns from getting suppurated.

Yet, the Cardassian had to dissuade her from touching him. "Thank you… good woman, I do wounds alone, no one watching."

She got the hint, the guy was embarrassed. "OK, I see. How are you going to the Kendra Shrine?" she went on, thoroughly engrossed in his fabrication.

"I don't know…walk, walk, walk." He really had no idea, asking her for transport would be too suspicious because it would spoil his image of a wandering tramp. She had done enough and he was thinking of an unobtrusive way to skulk off and check the local transport options by himself.

"What about being transported, being beamed there?" she suggested.

"That…possible here?" he asked with a feign surprise.

"Yes, we have a public transport facility but I suppose you have no identity card, you are unregistered, unaccounted…" she silenced awkwardly.

"Yes," Dukat confirmed, "Walking, no home."

"Where are you from?" she asked sounding somewhat distracted.

"Korto," he replied, slightly worried.

"Oh, yes, this explains everything. It was one of the first demolished cities." Then she continued with a sudden resolution. "Look, I know one of the operators at the public facility. He owns me one, so to say, and I think he can smuggle you to the Kendra Shrine without too much trouble."

She took the empty dishes, went to the food stall, filled a take-away box with food, grabbed two bottles of ice-cold water from the fridge and informed her husband, "I will be back in half a bell."

He snorted derisively, muttered "Suit yourself" and kept frying meat in the kitchen compartment.

Then she beckoned Dukat to follow her. He raised from the kerbstone and straggled after her carrying his newly acquired possessions into a bundle. He did not want her to feel embarrassed with him and kept behind her.

She slowed down for him to catch up and asked volubly to pass the time, "Have you ever been here?"

"No, but beautiful…no ruins." Dukat carefully weighted up his answer.

"Yes, I know what you mean," she laughed forcibly. "We got it easy during the Occupation. Our governor and the Cardie in charge of the district had a good relationship. Some people may call him a collaborator but he preserved the town. The farms around the town remained intact, the infrastructure wasn't destroyed, the industrial area was functional and even expanded and we kept our jobs and homes."

They entered the administrative area of the town. There were not stalls and shops, no passers-by, only people on business occasionally entered and left the buildings. The buildings were older and more elaborated. Kalessa stopped in front of a spacious three-storeyed building.

A framework of reinforced glass covered the entire first floor and it was converted into a transport facility, receiving and dispatching cargo and people all over the planet or from and to orbiting vessels. There were not people to be beamed up or down but the cargo section was quite busy, the containers materialised one after the other and the attendants carried them to adjacent stores.

She left Dukat in the doorway and went to one of the transport operators. It was a younger man who looked delighted to see her. She chatted to him for a while pointing several times in his direction. The operator's face expression changed from nervousness to suspicion and finally to resignation and submission. He started nodding and she gave him a dazzling smile.

Kalessa returned to the doorway and took Dukat who had wrapped the tick scarf around his head, neck and torso to look less disgusting.

The operator glanced at the pitiable vagrant and shook his head. "You have always been fond of hopeless causes but your current rescue project surpasses everything…" he trailed off while leading them to a distant teleport dais separated from the rest of the hall by a glass partition.

"You were my rescue project once and you look quite well for a hopeless cause," she teased him back.

She gave Dukat the box with food and the bottles and helped him to put them in the bundle. Then she reminded him, "Don't forget to look after your wounds, the more often you change the gauze, the better. Keep them clean. Now go to the Kendra Shrine and feel the Prophets."

The woman pushed him gently to the dais, he stood in the middle and said, "Thank you, Kalessa. I will never forget you." He was not lying. Sometimes, very rarely, he could afford to say the truth. Few seconds later, he felt the familiar tingle of the energising beam.


End file.
